Faculty
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Affiliated Faculty
TPSC affiliated faculty represent 5 colleges and 8 academic departments on campus.
Our growing community collaborates in unique ways to support sustainable production of food, feed, and biomaterial issues by improving yield, disease resistance, adaptation to a changing environment, plant metabolism, and metabolic engineering.
Together we teach the next generation of plant scientists, engage stakeholders, and facilitate cutting edge science to sustain and improve agricultural productivity.
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Srdjan Acimovic
Assistant Professor
Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Centers
Areas of Research
Plant pathogen biology, ecology; apple and pear fruit trees
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Brian Badgley
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Environmental microbiology; water and soil quality
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Areas of Research
Phonemics of currently grown crops with an emphasis on peanuts and future crops
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Bastiaan Bargmann
Assistant Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Fundamental and translational studies toward crop improvement through genome-editing and tissue-culture
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Areas of Research
Invasive plant ecology, biofuel ecology, allelopathy, risk assessment, weed science
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Amy Brunner
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Genomics of tree development, ecophysiology and adaptation; molecular genetics of tree maturation, flowering and crown architecture; epigenetic mechanisms and small RNAs in trees; long-distance signaling in trees
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Eva Collakova
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Regulation of metabolism during seed filling and seed metabolic engineering, multi-omics approaches, plant metabolic engineering
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Carrie Fearer
Assistant Professor
Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation
Areas of Research
Forest pathology; bioinformatics; endophytes and the tree microbiome
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Maaz Gardezi
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Areas of Research
Precision agricultlure; climate adaptation and vulnerability; and policy and governance
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David Haak
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Evolutionary ecological genomics; genetics in plant defense and physiology
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Jason Holliday
Associate Professor
Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation
Areas of Research
Population and evolutionary genomics, genome-enabled breeding, evolutionary ecology
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John Jelesko
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Plant specialized metabolism, poison ivy urushiol metabolism, and chemical ecology
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Courtney Leisner
Assistant Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Abiotic stress, physiology, molecular biology, genomics and bioinformatics, and specialized metabolism
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Song Li
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Plant genomics and bioinformatics, machine learning, and high throughput phenotyping
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Suyi Li
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Areas of Research
Robotics; autonomous and dynamical systems
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Marta Lima
Research Assistant Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Phytochemical content of fruits and legumes, and increasing iron bioavailability of legume grains
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Areas of Research
Plant-pathogen interactions
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Gota Morota
Associate Professor
School of Animal Science
Areas of Research
Genome–phenome relationship using statistical and quantitative genetics and its application to plant breeding
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Guillaume Pilot
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Regulation of amino acid transport and metabolism in Arabidopsis; and determinants of seed protein content in soybean
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Areas of Research
Genomics, and crop improvement
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Brianna Posadas
Assistant Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
SmartFarm Innovation Network™ : SmartTechnologies for crop and the green industries; data analytics, decisions, and machine learning for food, agriculture, communities, and health systems; and precision agriculture technologies
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Nicholas Santantonio
Assistant Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Small grains breeding program to produce superior wheat and barley varieties for eastern North America; integrating latest genotyping and phenotyping technologies to accelerate genetic improvement for new and changing environments; and quantitative genetics theory
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Birgit Scharf
Professor of Biological Sciences
Department of Biological Sciences
Areas of Research
Bacterial motility and chemotaxis; sensing of environmental signals, two-component signal transduction, the speed-variable flagellar motor, flagellotropic phage infection, function of type IV pili in symbiosis, tumor-targeting Salmonella
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Areas of Research
Airborne plant pathogens and ice-nucleating microbes; mycotoxins
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Sherif M. Sherif
Associate Professor
Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center
Areas of Research
Avoiding frost damage in apple and peach; enhancing annual bearing in apple; evaluation of apple varieties, rootstocks and high-density training systems; improving apple fruit quality and shelf-life of peaches and cherries; efficacy of non-chemical methods to control disease of apple and peach
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Dorothea Tholl
Professor of Biological Sciences
Department of Biological Sciences
Areas of Research
Biology, functional genomics, and biochemistry of chemical communication
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Jim Tokuhisa
Assistant Professor of Practice, Biological Sciences
Department of Biological Sciences
Areas of Research
Biochemical and molecular mechanisms of chemical defense fitness in higher plants
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Areas of Research
Genome-based classification and identification of plant pathogens and biocontrol agents; and biological ice nucleation activity
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Xiaofeng Wang
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Viral replication mechanisms and virus-host interactions of positive-strand RNA viruses
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Areas of Research
Flavonoid production in stressed potatoes ; pine drought stress; and orchid mycorrihizal relations
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Areas of Research
Parasitic plants; plant communication; and weed evolution
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Susan Whitehead
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Department of Biological Sciences
Areas of Research
Plant evolutionary responses to multi-species interactions; chemical ecology of seed dispersal and fruit defense; domestication and plant defense; agricultural applications of chemical ecology
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Areas of Research
Microbial ecology; plant growth promotion; rhizobium spp.; mycorrhizae; land management; natural ecosystems
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Brenda S.J. Winkel
Professor of Biological Sciences
Department of Biological Sciences
Areas of Research
Characterization of the architecture and localization of the Arabidopsis flavonoid enzyme complex using a variety of molecular, biochemical, and cell biological techniques
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Clay Wright
Assistant Professor
Biological Systems Engineering
Areas of Research
Plant development, hormone signaling, genetic engineering of yield/resistance/added-value crop traits, genetic variation, protein engineering, biosensors, directed evolution, and synthetic biology
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Yun Yin
Assistant Professor
Food Science and Technology
Areas of Research
Identification of aroma and flavor compounds in food systems; characterization of aroma/flavor formation pathways; convenient synthesis of highly unstable odorants; and applying novel engineering solutions to existing difficulties in flavor manufacturing
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Yuan Zeng
Assistant Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Plant Pathology; host-microbe interactions; and data science
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Bo Zhang
Associate Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Areas of Research
Soybean breeding; and crop genetics
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Areas of Research
Molecular plant-microbe interactions; plant biotechnology; and controlled-environment agriculture